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Tyrannosaurus
Tyrannosaurus rex is one of the most famous of all dinosaurs easily the most famous. It is represented in nearly every dinosaur movie. It hardly needs a page. It was one of the final dinosaurs, among the last killers. It lived in Prehistoric North America during the Cretaceous Period. Despite its popularity, much of what we know about it is wrong. It was not the monster that it was once represented by. Tyrannosaurus was actually much more intelligent than the dumb brute that it is usually depicted as. Scientists now think that Tyrannosaurus cared for its young. Its young may also have had feathers, and in fact adult Tyrannosaurus may well have had feathers. The discovery of Yutyrannus has led to this belief. However, at the same time the animal we know today is much more powerful than the one we knew in the 1900s. It was very heavily built, being much stronger than Spinosaurus and Giganotosaurus. Its bite was also immensely powerful. It is estimated to have had the mightiest bite of any land animal ever! Although some have suggested that Tyrannosaurus was a scavenger, this is highly unlikely. There is no way that a scavenger would need to be built so powerfully and have so many specializations. Tyrannosaurus was probably opportunistic, and may have done a little scavenging, however for the most part it was an active predator. After the rise of the armored dinosaurs, the Carnosaurs became much less numerous. This was when the Coelurosaurs reached larger sizes. They were more advanced and more powerful than the Carnosaurs, as they were adapted to battling extremely tough prey. There were two types of large predators at the end of the Cretaceous. The Tyrannosaurs were in the North, whereas there was no way for them to reach the South. In the Cretaceous, there was a clear divide between Northern landmasses and Southern landmasses. The largest southern Abelisaur was Ekrixinatosaurus, a giant similar in size to Tyrannosaurus. It has been suggested by some that Ekrixinatosaurus had a more powerful bite than Tyrannosaurus, however this requires more material before a consensus is reached. Although Abelisaurs were large and had a much more powerful bite than other carnosaurs, their teeth were still carnosaur teeth and probably could not handle a T. rex power bite. T-Rex is actually incorrect spelling. Tyrannosaurus is the genus name, and rex is the species name, so it would be spelled "capital first letter in genus period and lower case species". Therefore it should be spelled "T. rex". The name T. rex is actually scientific, it just has to be spelled correctly. An example of proper spelling in another species is C. megalodon . Specializations Tyrannosaurus is known for its many specializations. Apart from its bite which has been already discussed, its teeth were made in a style different than that of the Carnosaurs. The teeth of Tyrannosaurs was designed to crush bone rather than cause blood loss. This would be much more effective at bringing down prey smaller than itself as it would only need to inflict one bite rather than inflict multiple and then wait as the Carnosaurs would have to do. The stereoscopic vision of Tyrannosaurus was also greatly superior to most other large predatory dinosaurs. These other predatory dinosaurs had eyes on the sides of their heads, giving them very poor 3-D vision. Nearly every top predator today has eyes on the front of their head giving them better vision. This includes humans, although the eyesight of T. rex was even better than that of our own species. It could see about six times as well. Some other late Cretaceous predators such as Troodon had similar stereoscopic vision. If bite and vision were not enough, Tyrannosaurus had a much larger brain than most predatory dinosaurs. This would mean it would be skilled at thinking through tough situations. Manospondylus gigas An analysis of the remains of Tyrannosaurus rex showed that they were the same species as those previously named Manospondylus gigas by Edward Drinker Cope. The name means "giant porous vertebrae". Based on international nomenclature rules, it is incorrect to refer to Tyrannosaurus rex as "Tyrannosaurus rex", and it should therefore be referred to as "Manospondylus gigas". Another example of this would be Basilosaurus, a whale that's name was highly misleading, and therefore it was proposed that it should be changed to "Zeuglodon". However, this did not happen because of the international nomenclature rules. Still, the name of T. rex was not officially changed because so many scientific papers had already been published about Manospondylus under the name of "Tyrannosaurus". Because of this, it is still usually referred to as "Tyrannosaurus rex". The ICZN also published a rule about animals being able to keep a newer name under certain circumstances that Manospondylus meets. Category:Predatory dinosaur Category:Mesozoic Category:Cretaceous Category:Dinosaurs from north america Category:North America Category:Terrestrial Category:Dinosaur Category:Chordata Category:Top Ten List Featured! Category:Tyrannosaur